BIG BRIBES: Big Tech spent at least $250M to kill regulatory proposals in Congress

07/10/2023 / By Ramon Tomey

Big Tech firms such as Amazon, Apple, Alphabet and Meta have spent at least $250 million on efforts to kill regulatory proposals filed in both the Senate and the House of Representatives.

The National Pulse‘s Jack Montgomery shed light on the scheme in a July 7 article, claiming that the tech giants shelled out huge amounts to block any bills limiting their censorship of conservatives.

“Republicans concerned about censorship worked alongside Democrats championing unions to pass bills with bipartisan majorities. None of them made it to the floor of either chamber of Congress, despite public support for regulating Big Tech,” he wrote.

According to Montgomery’s piece, both the GOP and the Democrats are on the payroll of Big Tech.

For the Democrats, they are hesitant to challenge Silicon Valley as it helps them wage an ideological war against “hate speech” and “misinformation.” Former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) raised millions from tech executives before breaking a promise to put bills regulating Big Tech before the full House of Representatives.

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) privately assured donors from the technology sector that any proposals filed in the Senate could not overcome filibusters. According to Montgomery, the employment of the senator’s two daughters in two Big Tech firms – Amazon and Facebook – possibly influenced this commitment.

Montgomery added that even GOP representatives are compromised with Big Tech money. Lobbyist Jeff Miller, a close confidante of incumbent House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA), counts Amazon and Apple as two of his biggest clients. POLITICO remarked that Miller, who once worked for former California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, is “a very key and central figure” advising the House speaker. (Related: Matt Gaetz: ‘Congress not going to rein in Big Tech, Congress owned by Big Tech.’)

This Big Tech connection went full circle when McCarthy was elected to head the House of Representatives in January. One of his first actions upon replacing Pelosi was demoting Rep. Ken Buck (R-CO) in favor of Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY).

Buck has led GOP efforts on Big Tech regulation while the “libertarian” Massie has insisted that Big Tech should not be subjected to “Big Government.”

Reining in Big Tech is supposedly a rare issue the GOP and Democratic lawmakers could agree on

Professor Steven Pearlstein of George Mason University (GMU) in Virginia put in his two cents on Big Tech’s bribery of lawmakers in a July 6 op-ed. He pointed out that despite the differences in political opinions, reining in Big Tech “was the rare issue on which both Republicans and Democrats, House and Senate, could agree.”

This common ground led to lawmakers in both the upper and lower houses of Congress introducing several bills that sought to end the anti-competitive business practices of Apple, Amazon, Alphabet (Google’s parent) and Meta (Facebook’s parent) in 2021.

“By early 2022, all had been voted out of committees in both chambers with bipartisan majorities. All had broad support from voters, knowledgeable experts, regulators and the White House. Yet no [sic] one was taken up by the full House and Senate,” wrote Pearlstein.

He pointed his fingers at Big Tech, accusing it of being the “prime suspect” in the “legislative murder mystery.” The GMU professor also commented on the $250 million shelled out by tech companies to kill regulatory proposals in the halls of Congress. According to Pearlstein, this amount was used for “lobbying, advertising, public relations and stepped-up campaign contributions.”

“In financial terms, that represented about one-tenth of one percent of their combined annual profits. On a political scale, it was an overwhelming show of force.”

Visit BigTech.news for more stories about tech companies paying off Congress for their own interests.

Watch this video about how Big Tech has become Big Brother.

This video is from the Thrivetime Show channel on Brighteon.com.